The approaches described in this section are approaches that could be pursued, but not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated, it should not be assumed that any of the approaches described in this section qualify as prior art merely by virtue of their inclusion in this section.
Various devices are increasingly becoming network-enabled. It is possible to have home appliances networked in such a way that a network management device may be used to correlate the services provided by the home appliances. Network-enabled devices, such as printers and computers, are more common in the business setting. For example, a network management device may be pre-configured to receive and process a notification from a printer when the printer runs out of paper and/or ink. Upon receiving the notification, the network management device will notify (e.g., email, instant message) one or more users of the network so that the problem can be quickly resolved.
However, in current device management systems, whenever a new device or new service provided by an existing device is added to the network, it is necessary to modify code pertaining to the entire management system in order to support the new device or service. Thus, current network management systems are not extendable without rewriting the device management code. Furthermore, the management and correlation of services provided by various network devices in existing network management systems are pre-defined and, thus, also not easily extendable. Extending the network with new devices, services, and rules thus requires time and a significant expense to pay someone with knowledge of programming the specific network device manager.